A Message From The Commissioner -- Bad News

An e-mail that went out today:

A Message To All Social Security And DDS Employees

Subject: Budget Situation

As we start the 2008 fiscal year, I am sure that it is no secret to you that we are facing unprecedented workloads. We do so with our lowest staffing level in over 30 years, and these workloads will continue to grow at an increasing rate as the aging baby boomers begin to retire and reach their most disability-prone years. At the same time, Congress has given us new and non-traditional workloads, such as taking Medicare prescription drug subsidy applications.

These factors combined with years of congressional appropriations that have fallen far short of what the President has requested for this agency - almost $1 billion short - means that we must make hard decisions about which facilities and services should be scaled back, consolidated or eliminated.

Let me be candid about our current budget situation. Under any funding scenario currently being considered by Congress, we will have limited resources to maintain our current level of services and drive down the hearings backlog. In fact, under either the House or Senate bills, we will have less discretionary money to spend in FY 2008 than in FY 2007. As you know, our FY 2007 budget appropriation narrowly enabled us to avoid employee furloughs. While we expect to avoid furloughs this fiscal year, field offices and headquarters components will generally be unable to replace employees who leave and in our hearing offices, the only significant hiring will be for up to 150 ALJs and some support staff late in the fiscal year.

To some, this constraint on our ability to hire more staff may seem counterintuitive given the increases the House and Senate have provided for us -- $100 million more than the President’s budget in the House appropriations bill and $125 million more in the Senate bill. Let me explain. Social Security has a large infrastructure, including over 1,400 field and hearing offices. Mandatory cost increases, such as rent, guards, postage, pay raises and employee benefits, means that we require a minimum administrative budget increase each year of over $300 million to fund current operations. These increases, combined with requirements in the FY 2008 budget that we spend $477 million on program integr ity work (CDRs and SSI redeterminations), mean the amount of money available to the agency to invest in additional workload processing is very limited.

Even in the face of our budget shortfall, our demographic challenges and our added responsibilities, what impresses me the most is that you continue to maintain a can-do attitude. I see that can-do attitude every time I visit a field office, a hearing office, a TSC or PSC, our DDSs, the regional offices and the components here in headquarters. I also see it in the new and innovative ideas that employees come up with for dealing with our growing workloads. This is especially evident in our multi-faceted approach to reducing the disability backlog. We can all take pride in the improvement this year in DDS processing times and the virtual elimination of our FY 2007 “aged” hearing cas es (cases pending 1,000 days or more).

Despite this progress, we must continue to look for ways to streamline our business processes. We must also convince the public to take greater advantage of other ways of doing business with us, such as our online and automated telephone services. Doing so is one of the only ways we can survive the coming demographic surge. Doing so will not jeopardize the public’s ability to do business with us face-to-face when they are required to do so or the jobs of our employees.

A May 1, 2007, editorial in the New York Times noted that we are an agency that “gets high marks for productivity and efficiency.” Clearly our situation would be worse without the productivity improvements you have achieved. As an agency, we take great pride in making efficient use of our resources. Your efforts to innovate and automate, coupled with your unwavering dedication to public service, have improved productivity on average by 2.5 percent per year since 2001. In short, we continue to produce more each year with less. The Social Security Administration is a good investment, and it is regrettable that this fact is not as w idely recognized as it should be.

For many Americans, our programs are all that stand between them and poverty. The public expects and deserves the best service we can provide. With your innovation and dedication and with the support of Congress, we will continue to provide the level of service that millions of Americans have relied on for more than 70 years. I know it is often hard, but hang in there!

Michael J. Astrue

Commissioner

So, why has Astrue been telling Congress that he did not want any more money than was in President Bush's proposed budget? Social Security is likely to get $100-$125 million more than was in Bush's budget for this fiscal year, yet Astrue is still talking about closing offices, scaling back services and a near complete hiring freeze for this fiscal year. Why was he not warning Congress and the American people about this earlier!

Congress and prospective ALJs please note what Astrue says -- his agency will not be hiring 150 new ALJs and support staff until late in the fiscal year. That will probably not be enough to even replace the ALJ attrition over the next year and the hiring will not take place until almost a year from now. This is different from what Astrue told Congress just a few months ago. Why was Astrue not frank with Congress at that time about his agency's dire budget situation? There were some sparks when Astrue appeared before the House Social Security Subcommittee at that time. There could be an explosion this time.

Pain In Bismark -- And Allsup Can Help

From the Bismark Tribune:

The weather is changing. Bismarck resident Dan Neer can feel it from his lower back to the tip of his right toe.

Cool, damp weather makes his usual, constant back pain unbearable to the point he can be bedridden. ...

The pain also was the center of a battle to get disability benefits from the Social Security Administration. ...

It took two separate claims to the Social Security Disability Insurance, including appeals that were denied on the first claim, before he was approved for Social Security Disability in February. It took more than two years from his first application to be approved. ...

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., has asked President Bush and the inspector general's office to look into the process. ...

He wants the inspector general's office to investigate the process to find out why the approvals are happening on appeal instead of the initial consideration. He wants to know if it is deliberate or a lack of resources. ...

Neer reached a point he felt he needed the outside help. He found out about Allsup from his father-in-law. He called and talked to them about his experience.

"This woman wanted to know everything," he said. "This lady believed me. She said 'Dan, I think we have a case.' Someone believed me. Someone could help. So much pressure lifted off."

Stay On No-Match Letters Continued

From a press release from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California:

After a hearing today [October 1], a federal judge extended an order that temporarily stops the government from implementing a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rule that would cause U.S. citizens and other authorized workers to lose their jobs, and which would illegally use error-prone social security records as a tool for immigration enforcement. The judge's order also stops the Social Security Administration (SSA) from beginning to send notices to approximately 140,000 employers across the country notifying them of the new rule, which would impact approximately eight million workers.

Psycho In Punta Gorda

From WayOdd.com:

In a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock's 'Psycho,' police entered a Florida home to find a man keeping the body of his deceased, 86-year-old roommate in the bed where he supposedly died at least thirty days prior.

Punta Gorda police believe the 86-year-old John William Jones remained in the bed he died in while his roommate, David Morse, 40, carried on as usual, except with slightly more capital. Morse allegedly has been using Jones' ATM card and collecting his social security and pension checks since his death.

Connecticut Office Closes

From the Associated Press:

The Social Security Administration will shut its Bristol office on November 2nd.

Operations will be consolidated in the New Britain office, but Social Security will have a representative work a half-day a week in Bristol to provide limited services.

The agency says it will save $113,000 this year and about $1 million over 10 years.

Bristol City Council member Frank Nicastro says he will fight the decision to shut the office.

He says closing the office will force hundreds of elderly and disabled seniors to travel to New Britain for Social Security service.

Dickinson, ND Social Security Office Threatened

The Dickinson [ND] Press reports that rumors are swirling about the possible closure of the local Social Security office. The local District Office manager does not know what is going to happen. Local politicians are lobbying to keep the office open. It is becoming a familiar story.

AARP On Social Security Staffing

From the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) Bulletin, mailed to 29 million households:

Texans were already lining up to get help at the Social Security office in Pasadena, a suburb of Houston, at 8 a.m., an hour before the office opens. The glass-and-concrete building, which sits in a no-frills strip mall, is "known for its long waits," says Angelica Obregón, who was leaning against her walker on this muggy September morning, eyeing a gray sky that threatened rain.

"People bring chairs, people bring umbrellas, people bring their breakfasts...because they have a long wait—a long wait," says Obregón, 49, who has visited the office repeatedly about her Social Security disability case.

The Social Security Administration (SSA)—which touches the lives of virtually every American—was once touted as the preeminent can-do agency. But budget cuts, staff reductions and a growing list of new duties involving everything from Medicare to homeland security processing are taking a toll on the system that administers the nation's retirement program, its 1,500 offices in neighborhoods across the country—and the people who rely on them.

"This is a train wreck unfolding right in front of us," says Sylvester Schieber, chairman of the Social Security Advisory Board, an independent, bipartisan body whose members are appointed by the president and Congress to report on the agency.

"People will be alarmed," Schieber says, "to learn this agency they think they're going to depend on … doesn't have the resources to deal with the cases coming its way." ...

Calling a Social Security office can be as frustrating as lining up there. Today, an average of 51 percent of all calls to local offices get a busy signal, according to the SSA's own study.

The Bloomington, Ind., office, for example, serves five counties and has one person answering the phones, says Vicki Ketchum, who was interviewed before she retired as the district manager last month. "People have told me they've called the office for two weeks and couldn't get through," she says, "so they packed up the car and drove up to two hours to get here. That's not right."

Most disturbing may be the backlog in claims for disability insurance. Largely driven by boomers in their 50s—the years when working men and women are most prone to develop illnesses and disabilities, according to the SSA—the number of workers who say they are too sick or disabled to continue to work has grown by a staggering 60 percent in the past few years. Today 750,000 of these vulnerable Americans are waiting an average of 520 days—and in some areas close to three years—for a hearing on their claims.

"The agency is struggling to balance its new responsibilities and its traditional work," without added resources, Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue told a congressional hearing in May.

In a more recent interview with the AARP Bulletin, Astrue said that he is "trying to be optimistic. We're doing our best to stay as far ahead of the curve for as long as we can."

"Right now," he says, "in most parts of the country the level of service is quite high. But waiting times in some offices are more than what I or anyone else would like to see. And the disability backlog is simply unacceptable."

As the workload has been increasing, the number of SSA employees has been shrinking. The agency has lost 4,000 workers in the last two years alone, and staffing is at its lowest level in 33 years. ...

Three New Acting RCALJs

JOA reports on the CONNECT board that three new acting Regional Chief Administrative Law Judges (RCALJs) have been appointed. This is the list:

Judge Carol Sax for the Boston region
Judge Mark Sochaczewsky for the New York Region
Judge Glynn Voisin for the Philadelphia Region